Crash
by Reina de nieve
Summary: After crash landing on a remote planet an injured Darth Vader is found by a force sensative women. While recovering the women shows Darth Vader the events that led up to his crash from a different perspective.
1. Chapter 1

The wind blew softly through the grass on a planet largely covered by plains in the outer rim. A herd of five horses munched on grass while I slept on a bed of evergreen boughs. A mule stood over me watching me sleep. I dreamt of a man in a tie advanced fighter in black armor. 7 X wings were surrounding the tie fighter. The shields of the tie fighter had been completely destroyed. The hyperdrive was lost as well as one of the engines. Seeing that the tie fighter was trapped by the planet's gravitational pull the X wings pealed away. The tie fighter orbited the planet getting drawn in ever closer to its atmosphere. The edge of one of the wings of the tie fighter hit the atmosphere first causing in to cartwheel down to the ground.

I slept deeply in my tie fighter exhausted from from going over plans for the Death Star with Palpatine. I was so tired that I absentmindedly did not reach out through the force while I slept to scan for other life forms in my vicinity. I awoke to alarms blaring because I was being fired upon by a squadron of X wings. I channeled the anger I felt over my own carelessness to using it to immerse myself into the dark side. The pilot of the X wing closest to me clawed at his throat in a desperate attempt to breath. He soon fell still killed by my force choke. But not even my talent in using the force could protect me from the overwhelming numbers of the X wings.

This attack on me was clearly planned. One did not encounter be chance as squadron of 8 X wings. They must have dropped out of hyperspace right next to me otherwise my astromech would have alerted me to their presence. Someone must have betrayed me by leaking my flight plans to the rebellion. As I fell helplessly from the sky sucked into the planets gravity I went over the short list of people who knew my flight plans. All of them I had known for years and were therefore confident of their loyalty except for Admiral Piet's new assistant Lieutenant Conrat. I vowed revenge upon him. No traitor to the Galactic Empire lives for long.

My Tie-Fighter cartwheeled out of control as it entered the planet's atmosphere because all Tie-Fighters were only designed for travel in space. A plateau loomed before me and inspire of all of my years of meditation terror rose up within me. I used the force to try to redirect my crash into the cliff. It was a partial success. I hit the cliff at a shallow angle. The impacted jerked me forward. I collided with the control panel then everything went black.

I awoke with a start. The sky was just starting to turn grey in the east. Sensing my alarm the herd looked up from their grazing. "It was only a dream," I spoke reassuringly to them, "you can go back to eating your breakfast." Yet in spite of my reassurance all of them did not go back to grazing. Cloud an aloof mare stared east in the direction of the plateau.

"Shit!" I hissed under my breath my jaw clenched. As far as I was aware there was only there was only one person, if he even deserved to be called that, who wore life supporting armor. If course it had to be my luck that Darth Vader would crash land on the planet that I was on.

The logical thing to do would have been to run far far way from there. Yet I was strangely drawn toward the east. I got dressed, stamped out my fire, and ate a handful of chestnuts that I had roasted last night for breakfast. Seeing that Cloud, Lady, and Tiny were already moderately clean I just quickly groomed there saddle and girth areas with a stiff brush. Then I saddled the horses. Lady and Tiny each had a pack saddle. Lady carried my belongings while Tiny, a massive draft horse, carried a days worth of water for everyone. Cloud had a side saddle without a leaping horn. It was my preferred saddle to use when traveling through areas that were generally safe such as this one. Riding side saddle spared a part of me that tended to get sensitive around that time of month while the lack of a leaping horn enabled me to ride normally as well as on the off side using the same saddle. I smiled as I checked the time on my data pad. I had broken camp and saddled the horses in under twelve minutes, a new record.

I held Cloud's reins loose letting her pick her way towards the crash in the east that she was so interested in. The plateau loomed ahead growing ever larger. After quarter hour I switched to riding on the off side prompting several loud cracks from my back. As she grew more confident of where she was heading Cloud broke into a trot. The rest of the herd followed along side her. It was not long until she paused at the edge of a clearing at the bottom of the plateau.

It was not so much a natural clearing as a furrow carved through the glade by a Tie-Fighter. Yet again I found myself questioning why I was doing something so stupid as approaching a starfighter that probably held Darth Vader. To my own surprise my curiosity drove me on. The impact of the crash had partially opened the cockpit. Seeing a dead tree branch I reached up and hung on it. With a crack it broke off. I dragged it over and jammed the end in the cockpit. I rolled a rock over to use as a fulcrum. Sat on the other end of the branch and the cockpit opened far enough for me to enter it. I used the force to hold it open.

I slithered in head first. Darth Vader lay slumped over the controls legs awkwardly crossed. His lower legs were pinned by debris. His suit had been damaged by the crash and as far as I could tell was only functioning enough to keep him breathing. I reached out through the force to try to further discern his condition. The majority of his legs were cybernetic. I sighed with relief. That would make it far easier to free him. I grappled around for his light saber. I cut through the lower part of his legs and the straps on his harness. Next I pondered the problem of how to extract him from the cockpit without causing him further harm. I sat there for a good thirty seconds before the answer came to me. I was so stupid! I had a lightsaber. I could cut my way out of there.

I jumped out of the cockpit and gingerly dragged Darth Vader out behind me. Now that he was free of the damaged craft, I could finally get a better look at his injuries. The first thing that I looked at was the damage to his suit. An inability to breath tends to kill one rather quickly. After a bit of fiddling around with it, I was able to access the system diagnostics on his suit. While his suit was able to continue acting as a ventilator for him all of the climate control functions of it had failed. In addition to that there was only about a day's supply of IV fluids left. That put a serious wrench in my plans. I was about 5 days travel away from home by the way I had come. Through taking an alternative route I could cut it down to 3 days but that traveling away from fresh water through long expanses of exposed terrain.

Now assured that he wasn't about to stop breathing on my I set about trying to fix his legs. I suspected that his hips were dislocated. I had seen that injury once before when it happened to an old friend of mine in a speeder crash. I reduce the dislocations with no small amount of cursing. Darth Vader was fit and after his hips being dislocated for hours his muscles had stared to spasm. As his second hip finally when back into place with a clunk I felt presence of someone in pain in the force.


	2. Chapter 2

I was vaguely aware of the sensation of being moved. I was to out of it to question anything that was going on. Someone is touching my suit. I started to panic. Whoever controlled my suit quite literally had my life in their are they touching my suit! The panic was superseded by raw, blinding pain as they started to move my legs. The pain reached a crescendo and then rapidly dropped to a more manageable level. I started to slowly slip back into unconsciousness. But before that could fully happen I felt the horrific pain again. This time I knew what was coming. I tensed up and tried to kick out and whoever was inflicting this upon me.I only succeeded in setting off a series of muscle spasms that convinced me that moving at this point in time was not a good idea. Instead, I reach out through the force trying to figure out who is inflicting this suffering upon me. I am shocked when I sense to malicious intent.

"I see you are awake. It would be in your best interest not to attempt to move right now. I will do my best not to hurt you but given our current location and your current condition I am afraid that you will be in for a painful couple of days," spoke my captor.

"You're force sensitive aren't you? Who are you working for? I was unaware of Darth Sidious having another apprentice? Or is Obi-Wan still out there somewhere sticking his meddlesome hands in things that are none of his business?" I spat.

"How close minded you are. The galaxy is full of hidden places such as the planet you are on now Chronos III. There will always be some force sensitives that are missed by both the Jedi and the Sith."

"How is it that I have never heard of this star system before? Tell me more about it!" I demanded.

"I am afraid that I am not at liberty to share that information with you. But I can tell you that we are in the deep core. However, our location should be the least of your concerns right now. With the climate control on you suit not function come nightfall you will be endanger of hypothermia. We are at least three days away from my home which is the nearest location where I can jury rig a hyperbaric chamber. And you only have a days supply left of IV fluids. In case you can't put two and two together you will die of dehydration unless I prepare more fluids. That is of course if you don't die first of some unseen internal injury, which in all likelihood your will given the nature of your accident. So it would really be in your best interest to get in the way as little as possible unless you want your chances of survival to go from slim to nonexistent."

That shut me rather quickly. Upon observation I guessed that my captor was a she by her long hair, but it was difficult to tell as her clothing was thick enough to conceal any curves. She went about making camp with an ease that only came from long years of doing something. A fire was made beside me. I only realized that I was cold when I felt the warmth of the fire that felt wonderful.

With a knife she cut long strips of bark off of some nearby birch trees and folded the strips into a pot. She filled the pot with water and then dug threw her saddlebags for some salt. "Sorry horses but I need to steal a little of your salt," she apologized. She paused for a minute, presumably to calculate the amount of salt needed for an isotonic solution. Then using the force she scooped out the precise amount of salt and threw it into the pot. I filled this away as something to ask her about later. I had never heard of the force being used to measure something. To my amazement she set the pot on the fire and it didn't go up in flames.

"How does the thing you do with the pot work?" I asked.

"Given your fascination with engineering I am surprised that you can't answer that question for yourself. Birch bark burns at over 400oF. Water boils at 212oF. So long as there is water in the pot the birch bark will transfer the heat to the water and therefore never come even close to 400oF and therefore not catch fire" she explained.

She carefully poured the solution that had been boiling for the previous five minutes and quickly closed the lid. She ran off with my lightsaber. A few minutes later she came back dragging half a dozen evergreen boughs and the same number of tree limbs from deciduous trees. She used the tree limbs to construct and A-frame tent. With the frame constructed, she laid the evergreen boughs down inside it. The tent was finished by a trap draped over the frame and secured with rocks.

"I am sorry for causing you any further pain. But it really would be in your best interest if I were to carry you to the tent," she said apologetically.

"Why don't you just levitate me using the force?" I asked. "I've tested your shields. They are quite strong it is not like you lack sufficient power in the force to do so."

"What part of I am not formally trained in using the force do you fail to understand!" she spat back. "With no one to help me develop my skills my ability to use the force is somewhat erratic. I am quite good at some advanced skilled like mind tricks and have frequent visions but I am not that good at levitating things. I could just levitate you but being dropped would probably be more painful in the end then having me just pick you up to begin with."

With her rant done, she carried me into the tent. If I thought that I was in pain earlier it was nothing compared to the pain I was experiencing now that I was fully conscious. It felt like someone was stabbing me in the hips with a light saber. I struggled with the urge to force choke her. At last, the painful ordeal was over with. It probably was only a few seconds but to me it felt like hours.


	3. The Journey Part 1

I prepared for the long days travel that I would face tomorrow. I would have to cover at least 30 miles if I wished to reach a sheltered spot for the night. Given the pace I would have to set I briefly considered tying Darth Vader to one of the horses but quickly dismissed that idea as that would put his legs in a position where his hips were likely to dislocate again. I could sit him up in front of me on Snickerdoodle my other draft horse but that also had it's own set of problems. Carrying two people over that distance for multiple days was beyond Snickerdoodle's and my own strength. The only option left for me was to build a travois. I sighed. I was not going to get much sleep tonight.

I trudged off into the forest to gather wood for the travois. After obtaining the wood I began the tedious task of striping it of the bark. Blisters formed on the palms of my hands. I wrapped my hands it rags to protect what was left of my skin there and got back to work. After the wood was striped of it's bark and cut to proper length I dug through my bags for rope to tie everything together with. I thanked to force for suggesting that I bring more rope than usual on this ride. With the travois put together I fashioned a makeshift harness for Snickerdoodle. I cursed that I did not have the time to make a horse collar and could only make a breast collar that would press on Snickerdoodle's trachea but I simply did not have the few days it would take to make a horse collar.

By the time the travois and harness were put together the sky was just starting to lighten in the east. I considered not making caff that morning but decided against it. It simply would not do for me to be falling asleep on my horse. For breakfast I ate some chestnut that I had roasted two nights ago.

I reached out through the force asking Darth Vader to wake up. He responded by attempting to force push me before realizing that it was just me. I smiled. Him attacking me was a good sign. If after a day since the crash he was conscious enough to use the force like that he probably didn't have any internal bleeding.

I walked over to the fire in order to wake him but King beat me to it. King was a reddish brown horse that was just large enough to be classified as a horse and had a medium horse. However there was nothing ordinary about this horses's personality. He insisted upon being in charge of everything. With a devilish grin in envisioned him and Darth Vader clashing in a battle of wills once he got better. When Darth Vader didn't move King nipped at him. "King go bother someone else I don't have time for your antics," I chastised him. He looked up at me expectantly. "Oh, yes. I forgot you need your appeasement gift don't you," I said with a laugh I dug a dried apple slice out of my pocket.

Kneeling down beside Darth Vader I said, "I'm sorry but we have to get going now. I'll try to be gently picking you up," sliding my arms underneath him I deposited him on the travois. "Speak up now if you want to be repositioned or forever make your peace because I am NOT stoping until at least noon."

"I'd appreciate it if you would move my legs a bit farther apart," he said embarrassed by his own weakness.

I complied with his request and with a running leap jumped up onto Cloud landing on her croup with my legs astride. Swinging my right leg over to her left side I scooched forward into the saddle. I picked up the reins and with squeeze of my left leg and a tap of the whip in my right hand I urged her up into the trot. The rest of the herd followed along behind me.

I attempted to make myself relax, yet, the every time I got semi relaxed the travois was get stuck in some sort of rut bumping me around setting off muscle spasms. The hours blurred together in a sea of endless agony. On the edges of my consciousness I was vaguely aware of the mysterious women sending out soothing emotions through the force. The pain made me want to reach for the dark side out of habit. I seethed imagining the revenge I would have on Lieutenant Conrat. I blamed him for causing all of the problems I was currently experiencing on him.

Suddenly another person intruded into my mind cutting me off from the dark side. It was not exactly difficult to figure out who it was considering that my rescuer was the only force sensitive close enough to do this. Her shields were solid. Therefore I resorted to force chocking her.

She returned the favor. "Don't try that again!" she hissed at me. "I was raised by some of the most feared beings in the galaxy. If you think you can intimidate me by force chocking me you're going to be sorely disappointed."

Her response intrigued me. My initial assumption was that she was not very force sensitive considering the difficulty she had in levitating objects. However I was now forced to reconsider my assumptions. The shields were some of the strongest I had ever encountered. From when she let me probe her mind when I had first returned to consciousness it was obvious that she had not fallen to the dark side. But she used a force choke on me, a use of the dark side. I have only known a few force sensitizes that used the dark side who did not fall. They were on the Jedi council. She was no Jedi. I would have known of her if she was.

Lost in my pondering, I jerked back to awareness when the travois stopped. She slid down from the saddle and ran the stirrup up with the confident nonchalance that only came from years of doing something. She knelt down beside me and with me lightsaber cut open my armor along my collar bone. She sterilized my skin with iodine and then withdrew from her bags a presterilized hypodermic needle and syringe. She filled the syringe with the saline she had prepared last night before sliding the needle in just below my collar bone, pulled back blood entering the syringe and injected some of the saline.

I again tried to probe her mind curious about her name. "You could have just asked," she said with a smile. "By the way my name is Jazlyn."

She went back to work over the next hour completing the tedious job of injecting the entire jar full of saline into me. When she was about two thirds of the way through the task I asked her, "Do you make a habit of carrying around needles with you?"

"I've learned that it is better to have them and not need them then to need them and not have them," she replied. "There is nothing quite like trying to pull quills out of a horse's face after they decided to get a little too friendly with a porcupine with no means to numb the area or sedate them."

"What are porcupines?" I asked.

She responded by sending me an image of them through the force.

The afternoon passed the same way that the morning had except this time Jazlyn rode on the off side. I was surprised when she did not stop when the sun set. Instead she forged ahead guided by the light of the three moons. She finally stoped around three hours after sun set. She made camp like she had the day before. She started to make another batch of saline. After it was on the fire she said, "I'm going to leave for a few minutes to see if I can catch myself dinner. If you need anything just reach out to me through the force." With those parting words she grabbed her blaster and disappeared into the forest.

Jazlyn announced her return with a rant, "Today is just not my lucky day. First the force guides me to drag a Sith Lord across thirty miles of wilderness and then I can't even have a good dinner. Why did there have to be nothing but rabbits? I hate rabbits! They taste like chicken with extra emphasis on the flavors that make chicken disgusting. And I don't have time to skin it carefully so I won't even be making any credits off it's pelt."

She butchered the rabbit and started it roasting over the fire. While the rabbit was cooking she gave me half the saline and canned the rest of it. She ate her fill of the rabbit and hauled the rest of it up a tree. With that taken care of she fell asleep wrapped in a bantha skin blanket.


	4. The Journey Part 2

Like the day before I stopped at noon to administer fluids to Darth Vader. About half way through it a light mist began to fall accompanied by a drop in temperature. I dug a waxed tarp out of my bags and wrapped his lower body in it carefully avoiding where I had cut open his armor lest I contaminate the area.

As the afternoon passed the wind picked up. It was bitterly cold and stung my face as a traversed across the open plain. Darth Vader nudged me through the force. That had become his customary signal that he wished to speak to my as neither of us new each other well enough to hold a conversation through the force nor was his voice modulator functioning so he could speak in little more that a whisper.

I slid off of Cloud signaling her to continue on with a tap on her croup. I fell in running alongside Darth Vader. "What do you want now?" I griped with a smile, clearly not meaning what I said.

"I'm cold get me a blanket," Darth Vader ordered. I sighed. It was clear that he didn't not appreciate being at the mercy of other to supply his basic needs. I had anticipated that something like this might happen so when I packed Lady that morning so I had tucked a few bantha furs underneath the ropes that secured her pack saddle. I pulled out the topmost one and laid it on Darth Vader. With him taken care of I remounted Cloud and took off again at the canter.

Night fell and along with it the temperature also fell. Thankfully the rain had eased off but the sky was still cloudy. I stoped by a slight ridge. It wouldn't afford much protection against the elements but it was the best shelter for miles around. For at least ten miles in every direction a barren plain lay, much of it being exposed bed rock. I used the precious little wood that I had gathered from yesterday's camp site to make a fire so I could make a fire so I could sterilize the saline solution.

With no wood left there would be no tent that night or fire. I lay down on the ground beside Darth Vader and covered both of us in furs. I started out the night facing him as that conserved the most body heat but I found that I could not fall asleep practically hugging a Sith Lord. Reluctantly I rolled over on my back, at this point I considered it unlikely that he would attempt to kill me in my sleep. If he killed me given his current condition it would be the equivalent of committing suicide. Darth Vader was manny things be I doubted that he was suicidal.

I woke up to a cold rain drizzling on me. I debated waking her but I knew that there was nothing more that she could do for me to provide shelter. For hour after lonely hour I lay there. Shivering brought along the agony that accompanied any movement. Eventually the feeling of cold faded and I started to feel warm and sleepy. The force warned me not to fall asleep but it was just so tempting. That was my last thought as I drifted off into sleep's warm embrace.

A warning from the force woke me up. I rolled over and prodded him with the force. There was no response. I moved on to more persuasive methods of awakening him. I gently force choked him. If that didn't wake him up nothing would. Again there was no response. He was freezing cold. I understood that getting hypothermia wasn't his fault but I was still pissed. I had been looking forward to a good night's sleep after a long day of riding.

A part of wanted take off at a canter but the more reasonable part of me overruled the emotional part of me. I settled for the extended walk in the distance the woods growing larger at a far too slow weight. But rushing would only injure one of my horses which would cost me even more time. At last I reached the woods.

I set to work chopping down the driest branches I could find. I a knife and a piece of flint out of my pocket. My fingers were numb from the cold and repeatedly my hand slipped and I cut myself on the knife. The bark rapidly became moist and refused to easily catch the spark. At last it lit. A tiny glow of hope. I patiently fed it small twigs no thicker than a pencil gradually working my way until I had a small fire. I dragged Darth Vader over to the side of fire. I got out the jar of saline and warmed it for a minute by the side of the fire. Around the second syringe full of warm saline he started to wake up.

"Never scare me like that again. I do not enjoy moving to a different camp site in the middle of the night because someone nearly died of hypothermia because they didn't say something. Believe it or not I do have better things to do with my time than babysit ungrateful Sith Lords."

"By now I know that you aren't sincere in your threat to abandon me. If you had planed to abandon me you would have never bothered to rescue me in the first place. You're strong in the Unifying Force like Count Dooku was. You know things before they happen. You knew my identity before you pulled my out of the wreckage. Didn't you?"

A sleet began to fall gradually being replaced by pure snow. "We need to get moving. I was not expecting such unseasonably cold weather or a second person when I packed. I lack the necessary gear to survive in this weather. That is if you want to be a later for you to interrogate me about my force sensitivity."

I stuck some rocks into the fire. After they were warm I tucked them in between the layers of blankets. The rocks would not hold the heat for long but it was better than nothing. Rather than continuing to ride sidesaddle I switched to riding Marble a seal brown appaloosa mare that was technically a pony but built like a horse. In the cold I preferred to sacrifice the comfort that came with the better pressure distribution that a saddle provided in exchange for the heated seat that riding bareback provided. The sun rose lighting the world up in a hazy gray with the snow still lightly falling on the ground. Now that it was light enough out for my horses to see well I spent as much of the day at the trot as possible. Due to the hard riding I was forced to stop about once an hour for a water break for the horses. I took the time to work the kinks out of my back that come from siting trot from hours on end. Finally I reached home but unbeknownst to me this strange adventure was only beginning.


	5. Home Sweet Home

I thanked the force that I had kept that old YT-1300 freighter. With the Chronos II being a relatively metal poor planet and imports being limited to 5 YT-1300 freighters a year in order to lessen the chances of the planet's location being discovered scrap metal was an extremely valuable commodity. All the weapons on the ship and most of the engine related components had been striped and sold. However the life support systems were still functional so it was very simple to raise the air pressure inside. I had originally acquired the ship when it was auctioned off after being decommissioned.

I got it for a bargain after I took advantage of an obscure price control that limited the price of auctioned off items from the government to a thousand credits. The law had been passed around 700 years ago in a futile attempt to control the skyrocketing price of weapons during rumors of a coup but had never been repealed. It seems that there is nothing more permanent than a temporary government program.

I unloaded Darth Vader into my home and plopped him down on a sofa before I went outside to care for my horses. They were my first priority. Without them it would be impossible for me to travel to check my traps and haul furs into market and they certainly made the long trips I sometimes had to take for mining companies to survey the land easier. It untacked those of them than had saddles or harness on and gently palpated their back checking for dry or hot spots. I quickly check their hooves. Due to the snow there was no mud or stones that needed to be picked out but it was always best to check anyways as the one time I don't do is always when they end up bruising their hooves or getting thrush. I refilled their water bucket and then released them to their pasture. Things like refilling their hay net could wait until I had stabilized Darth Vader.

I used his lightsaber again to cut him out of his armor. After I lifted off his mask he said his voice hardly more than a whisper, "Why don't you look at me with shock and disgust like the few doctors that have seen me do?"

"You are hardly the first burn victim I have seen. A few years ago some paleontologist were mining for fossils. But fossils weren't the only thing down there. There was coal as well. It is unknown how the fire started but when it did it raced through the mine. Of the twelve people down there only four made it out alive. Of those four only two lived the other two were burnt over most of their bodies. I was sent for to help as I was the only person in the area at the time who knew medicine. But this is an isolated planet and medical supplies are scarce, the only places that hospital are a handful of the largest cities. By the time I came infection had set in and I knew they had no chance of survival. I had no strong anesthetic with me. I was left the choice between watching them take days to die in agonizing pain or shoot them and put them out of their misery. In the end they begged for death and in spite of what my conscience told me I did it. That decision haunts me to this day."

I drew his arms out of his suit. "So the rumors are true. You really are missing all four limbs. Not that it matters to me. I was just curious if they were true considering that even my informants could not tell me if they were true."

"I thought you said that almost no one could enter or leave the planet," he replied.

"That's true, but few consider a sentient being to be a someone if they lack a body." This conversation was heading towards topics I preferred to avoid.

"You are allied with Filar-Nitzan," he blurted out.

"That's enough! Conversations like this rarely end well."

With shaking hands I wrapped him in a blanket. Bruising along his hips was molted shades of black and blue. His ribs were further covered in bruises and somewhat swollen but there did not appear to be any displaced fractures. "Count yourself lucky. The force must have wished for you to live. By all rights you should be dead from internal bleeding and your body a twisted mess."

I'd clearly struck a nerve when I mentioned the Filar-Nitzan. Based on her employment she seemed to have an extensive background in science. Perhaps she was an explorer of wild space. That would explain her association with the Filar-Nitzan. But it would not explain how touchy she was about them or the fact that she lives in exile.

Now that I was warmer I started to shiver again. Jazlyn walked out of site to the kitchen and I heard a cacophony accompanied by a few choice words as she knocked over that I presume was a stack of pans. The hollow ring of water filling a tea kettle proceeded the click of a stove being turned on. A few minutes later I heard the kettle whistling and then the soft gurgle of boiling water being poured. She returned with two mugs full of tea.

"I hope you don't mind the taste of chamomile," she said as she pressed the warm mug into my hands. She tipped her head back as gulped her's down in a few swallows. I wonder how she did it without burning herself as min was still to hot to drink more then tinny sips.

"It's called ice cubes," she said with laughter in her voice. "I'm going to wash up so I can remove the central veinous line." She left again and I heard the sound of water running. "Dang! I'm out of sterile gloves and I cross threaded the cap on the bottle of isopropyl alcohol so it all evaporated. Now I am going to have to use iodide and am going to be stuck with colorful hands for weeks. Today is just not my day."

When she returned her hands were stained brown from the iodine with an underlying red tone from scrubbing them clean. Using iodine she scrubbed around the insertion site for a good minute before pulling out the line. I squirmed at the strange sensation of it coming out. "All done for now at least," she said with a smile as she pressed a piece of gauze down to stop the bleeding. A loud thud shook the room. "I better get going. King is getting impatient. He knows that after he gets home from a long trip he gets a treat and is getting impatient. He has an unfortunate tendency to get destructive when he doesn't get his way. Earlier this year he kicked my door down. I took two months earnings to get it fixed."

I exited my home and shouted out to King, "Get away from my home or I'll sell you to a Hut!" King looked up at me and then proceeded to strip one of my ornamental trees of it's bark. For all my threats King knew I would never actually follow through with them. In spite of his faults I was rather fond of him. I fixed all my horses up a bran mash with calcium supplements thrown in to keep their diet balanced. Snickerdoodle looked up at me expectantly clearly wanting more food. "You poor little horsey," I said sarcastically to him, "you actually had to work. Imagine that! Sorry, but your not getting more food from me. Go graze and do all of your other little horsey things."

I stomped the snow off my boot and threw my coat on the floor when I got inside. I was too exhausted to put it away tonight. After all it would still be their in the morning.


End file.
